If you want to make your submission available for the calendar, you should make sure the document can be made available in a single page pdf that has a size that does not exceed A4/landscape. I will ask you for the pdf if I need it.

Your submission may use user-defined packages and proprietary fonts. There is no need to make these available.

Your submission should include a short description and a screenshot of the output.

24 Answers
24

I have partially completed my PhD, and, use this on the inside cover of my submissions to add some 'artistic-flair', however, the source for the word-cloud is actually my BibTeX Database, so the cloud is relevant to each document, and, the sample above is effectively the last one that I produced.

In terms of methodology, the cloud itself was produced in R, via custom package, which I have written for this purpose. This custom package is more-or-less a convenience wrapper to the wordcloud package which is freely available.

To integrate it with LaTeX, I used knitr, however, this is simply to call the R package, which I have instructed to produce the result in .tikz format.

Here's a nineteenth century-style advertisement for TeX, demonstrating XeTeX's OpenType support and the power of OpenType fonts. A single font, Phaeton, was used to produce this file: all the text, the abbreviations, the banners, the ornaments used in the background and the image of the man on the horse are glyphs in the font.

How to get the different font features of a font? Not all otf fonts have all the features. Anyway this is a retro but nice style.
– s__CDec 14 '13 at 9:20

1

@s__C Many rich (such as Phaeton) come with documentation that list the OpenType features. There are font programs that can show you every character and OT features; I use FontMatrix, which is for Linux and Windows. The Adobe Font Development Kit can also tell you about OT features.
– ChrisSDec 14 '13 at 9:24

1

@s__C See tex.stackexchange.com/questions/75720/… and the first question linked in there. ChrisS – FontMatrix might be another answer to that question of mine there? If so, your writing up an answer would be appreciated!
– doncherryDec 14 '13 at 11:49

Where can one can the Phaeton font for installation on Debian Linux?
– Faheem MithaDec 14 '13 at 12:44

@doncherry FontMatrix doesn't give you a glyph-by-glyph list of substitutions for each feature, as the question asks; it only allows you to apply different combinations of features to a block of text, so I don't think it provides enough detail for that question.
– ChrisSDec 15 '13 at 6:37

Code

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[landscape,a4paper,hmargin=1.5cm,vmargin=1.5cm]{geometry}
\usepackage[osf]{garamondx}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[cmyk,dvipsnames]{xcolor}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{multicol}
\setlength{\columnsep}{2cm}
\usepackage{lettrine}
%\setlength{\DefaultNindent}{0em}
\setcounter{DefaultLines}{4}
\input Zallman.fd
\newcommand*\initfamily{\usefont{U}{Zallman}{xl}{n}}
\renewcommand{\LettrineFontHook}{\initfamily}
\usepackage{bbding}
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]
\shade[outer color=gray!15,inner color=white] (current page.south west) rectangle (current page.north east);
\draw[gray!45,dashed] (current page.south) -- node[pos=.01,rotate=90] {\ScissorRight} (current page.north);
\end{tikzpicture}
\begin{multicols}{2}
\newcommand{\pamphlet}{%
{\Huge\hfill\textsc{\textcolor{RoyalBlue}{T}he
\textcolor{RoyalBlue}{F}reedom} \textit{of} \textsc{the
\textcolor{RoyalBlue}{P}ress}\hfill} \vspace{\baselineskip}
\lettrine{\textcolor{RoyalBlue}{I}}{} am well acquainted with all
the arguments against freedom of thought and speech ---the
arguments which claim that it cannot exist, and the arguments
which claim that it ought not to. I answer simply that they don't
convince me and that our civilization over a period of four
hundred years has been founded on the opposite notice. For quite
a decade past I have believed that the existing Russian
\textit{r\'egime} is a mainly evil thing, and I claim the right to
say so, in spite of the fact that we are allies with the USSR in a
war which I want to see won. If I had to choose a text to justify
myself, I should choose the line from Milton:
\begin{quote}
\itshape By the known rules of ancient liberty.
\end{quote}
The word \textit{ancient} emphasizes the fact that intellectual
freedom is a deep--rooted tradition without which our
characteristic western culture could only doubtfully exist. From
that tradition many of our intellectuals are visibly turning away.
They have accepted the principle that a book should be published
or suppressed, praised or damned, not on its merits but according
to political expediency. And others who do not actually hold this
view assent to it from sheer cowardice. An example of this is the
failure of the numerous and vocal English pacifists to raise their
voices against the prevalent worship of Russian militarism.
According to those pacifists, all violence is evil, and they have
urged us at every stage of the war to give in or at least to make
a compromise peace. But how many of them have ever suggested that
war is also evil when it is waged by the Red Army? Apparently the
Russians have a right to defend themselves, whereas for us to do
[\textit{so}] is a deadly sin. One can only explain this
contradiction in one way: that is, by a cowardly desire to keep in
with the bulk of the intelligentsia, whose patriotism is directed
towards the USSR rather than towards Britain. I know that the
English intelligentsia have plenty of reason for their timidity
and dishonesty, indeed I know by heart the arguments by which they
justify themselves. But at least let us have no more nonsense
about defending liberty against Fascism. If liberty means
anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not
want to hear. The common people still vaguely subscribe to that
doctrine and act on it. In our country ---it is not the same in
all countries: it was not so in republican France, and
it is not so in the USA today--- it is the liberals who fear
liberty and the intellectuals who want to do dirt on the
intellect: it is to draw attention to that fact that I have
written this preface.
\vspace{\baselineskip}
\noindent\textit{Extract from}
\textsc{The Freedom of the Press}\textit{, by
\textcolor{RoyalBlue}{George Orwell}.
Proposed Preface to `Animal Farm', 1945.
First published: The Times Literary Supplement,
September 15, 1972.}\par
} \pamphlet \columnbreak \pamphlet
\end{multicols}
\end{document}

Please fix the first comment because it has to be compiled with XeTeX.
– marczellmDec 4 '13 at 18:46

1

Thanks. I made two (minor/pedantic) changes in the source code. Could you provide a link to the output pdf please? (I cannot read the text in the picture.)
– user10274Dec 6 '13 at 11:12

3

This is a coincidence. I had a look at your website and I noticed something that had caught my eye before. Would you considering submitting the cover of The Book of Tea? I think it would be an excellent example of what I am looking for.
– user10274Dec 6 '13 at 11:57

Not sure how I could work that portrait format into a landscape. Also, I'm afraid that the cover was drawn up in Altsys Virtuoso if memory serves --- I guess I could (should) re-create it in XeLaTeX --- I'll keep that in mind when it surfaces again as a project. Currently really busy w/ documentation for the ShapeOko 2 and trying to get a book re-print off the ground. My apologies.
– WillAdamsDec 10 '13 at 16:58

Here's a demonstration of TeX's hyphenation and justification algorithm. Apart from changing a few \sfcodes and using character protrusion with microtype, this is TeX's default output with no manual line breaks or hyphenation points.

% save this document as example.tex
% compile this document with: xelatex -shell-escape example.tex
\documentclass{article}
% Needed to make sure your page dimensions
% are the same as that of the calendar.
\usepackage[landscape,a4paper,hmargin=9pc,vmargin=8pc]{geometry}
\usepackage{calc}
\usepackage{multicol}
\columnsep=15pt
\multicolsep=15pt
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont[Mapping=tex-text,RawFeature={+onum,+pnum}]{Garamond Premier Pro Medium}
\def\normalsize{\fontsize{10}{15}\selectfont}
\usepackage{soul}
\sfcode`;=3000
\sfcode`?=3000
\sfcode`:=3000
\parskip=0pt
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{xltxtra}
\usepackage{microtype}
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
{\fontsize{24}{30}\selectfont\centering\so{THE CRYSTAL GOBLET}\par}
\vspace{\baselineskip}
{\centering\emph{by} \so{BEATRICE WARDE}\par}
\begin{multicols}{3}\noindent
Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You may choose
your own favourite vintage for this imaginary demonstration, so that
it be a deep shimmering crimson in colour. You have two goblets
before you. One is of solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite
patterns. The other is of crystal-clear glass, thin as a bubble, and
as transparent. Pour and drink; and according to your choice of
goblet, I shall know whether or not you are a connoisseur of wine.
For if you have no feelings about wine one way or the other, you will
want the sensation of drinking the stuff out of a vessel that may have
cost thousands of pounds; but if you are a member of that vanishing
tribe, the amateurs of fine vintages, you will choose the crystal,
because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than to
hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain.
Bear with me in this long-winded and fragrant metaphor; for you will
find that almost all the virtues of the perfect wine-glass have a
parallel in typography. There is the long, thin stem that obviates
fingerprints on the bowl. Why? Because no cloud must come between
your eyes and the fiery hearth of the liquid. Are not the margins on
book pages similarly meant to obviate the necessity of fingering the
type-pages? Again: The glass is colourless or at the most only faintly
tinged in the bowl, because the connoisseur judges wine partly by its
colour and is impatient of anything that alters it.
There are a thousand mannerisms in typography that are as impudent and
arbitrary as putting port in tumblers of red or green glass! When a
goblet has a base that looks too small for security, it does not
matter how cleverly it is weighted; you feel nervous lest it should
tip over. There are ways of setting lines of type which may work well
enough, and yet keep the reader subconsciously worried by the fear of
`doubling' lines, reading three words as one, and so forth.
Printing demands a humility of mind, for the lack of which many of the
fine arts are even now floundering in self-conscious and maudlin
experiments. There is nothing simple or dull in achieving the
transparent page. Vulgar ostentation is twice as easy as discipline.
When you realise that ugly typography never effaces itself, you will
be able to capture beauty as the wise men capture happiness by aiming
at something else.
The `stunt typographer' learns the fickleness of rich men who hate to
read. Not for them are long breaths held over serif and kern, they
will not appreciate your splitting of hair-spaces. Nobody (save the
other craftsmen) will appreciate half your skill. But you may spend
endless years of happy experiment in devising that crystalline goblet
which is worthy to hold the vintage of the human
mind.%\hfill\reflectbox{\XeTeXglyph352}
\end{multicols}
\begin{multicols}{4}\noindent\fontsize{8}{15}\selectfont
\textsc{Beatrice Warde} (1900--1969) was an American-English
communicator of typography. Her essay, `The Crystal Goblet',
first delivered as a speech, `Printing Should Be Invisible', to
the British Typographers' Guild, in 1930, is one of her most
famous works. It was published as a pamphlet in 1932 and again in
1937, and in 1955 appeared in a book entitled \emph{The Crystal
Goblet:\ Sixteen Essays on Typography}. The abbreviated text
reproduced above was taken from \emph{Typography Online}
(nenne.com/typography). It is set here by \XeLaTeX\ in ten point
Garamond Premier Pro, which was designed by \textsc{Robert
Slimbach} (1956--\hspace*{0.5em}) in imitation of the types of
\textsc{Claude Garamond} (\emph{ca.}\,1490--1561).
\end{multicols}
\end{document}

The text is Beatrice Warde's The Crystal Goblet, an essay that praises simplicity in typography; the precise text is an abbreviated version that appears here. The typeface, a Garamond, is considered by some to be the closest thing we have to such a crystal goblet.

The source code and output are available here. Also available is a version with manual kerning at the top of the third column of the main text.

Is there a missing blank space after "fear of" at the top line of the third column?
– jonalvDec 11 '13 at 15:33

@jonalv I did notice this when I was compiling: the space is not missing, but it looks like it is, because: 1) that line is set quite tightly; 2) the ascender on the 'f' hangs over the space; and 3) the open quote does the same.
– ChrisSDec 11 '13 at 22:04

@ChrisS Isn't this a kerning problem? At least I will add some manual space to improve readability.
– TeXtnikDec 13 '13 at 11:34

% Compile with lualatex
\documentclass[svgnames,12pt]{article}
\usepackage{fontspec,microtype,shapepar,xcolor}
\setmainfont[Contextuals=Alternate,Ligatures={Historic,Rare},ItalicFeatures={Ligatures=Contextual,Style=Swash}]{EB Garamond}
\usepackage[landscape,a4paper,hmargin=1.3in,vmargin=.65in]{geometry}
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
\color{Crimson}
\Large
\heartpar{\itshape
Only name the day, and we’ll fly away
In the face of old traditions,
To a sheltered spot, by the world forgot,
Where we’ll park our inhibitions.
Come and gaze in eyes where the lovelight lies
As it psychoanalyzes,
And when once you glean what your fantasies mean
Life will hold no more surprises.
When you’ve told your love what you’re thinking of
Things will be much more informal;
Through a sunlit land we’ll go hand-in-hand,
Drifting gently back to normal.
%
While the pale moon gleams, we will dream sweet dreams,
And I’ll win your admiration,
For it’s only fair to admit I’m there
With a mean interpretation.
In the sunrise glow we will whisper low
Of the scenes our dreams have painted,
And when you’re advised what they symbolized
We’ll begin to feel acquainted.
So we’ll gaily float in a slumber boat
Where subconscious waves dash wildly;
In the stars’ soft light, we will say good-night—
And “good-night!” will put it mildly.
%
Our desires shall be from repressions free—
As it’s only right to treat them.
To your ego’s whims I will sing sweet hymns,
And ad libido repeat them.
With your hand in mine, idly we’ll recline
Amid bowers of neuroses,
While the sun seeks rest in the great red west
We will sit and match psychoses.
So come dwell a while on that distant isle
In the brilliant tropic weather;
Where a Freud in need is a Freud indeed,
We’ll always be Jung together.}
\vspace{-8pt}
\footnotesize\noindent Dorothy Parker\hfill\itshape The Passionate Freudian to His Love
\end{document}

Birthday card

About a month ago it was my boyfriend's 22nd birthday. I bought him the absolutely cutest
stuffed bear evur and made a childish birthday card with gimp/inkscape. I know it's not a
masterpiece, but he liked it anyway, so please don't be mean. I decided to replicate it with
lualatex for this challenge. No real reason for lualatex over xelatex, but some parts of this
are easier to program in lua than they are in tex.

To compile it you must:

have futura, zapfino and scriptina fonts installed in your system

download the cats

run lualatex twice and wait, it's rather complex and it will take quite some time

It's not an exact replica. Here's why:

first of all, my card was in italian and this one is in english

the actual card wasn't completely vector: e.g. I created that hearts "flow" with a brush in
gimp, and to do it I rasterized my vectors for a5 paper at 300dpi

I changed the font from segoe ui to futura and fitted it better to the canvas

I always wanted to edit it and put those "ILOVEYOU" behind everything

I could have exported my vectors to tikz from inkscape, that would have been faster but
where's the fun? I decided to do it all by hand (thus lots of positions are slightly changed)

the hearts flow is randomly generated, similarly to what I did with gimp but of course, it's
random so it's never the same

in the actual card I used vector hearts from internet (don't tell my bf about this)

However, I think it's close enough. I'm totally not a pro at tikz, and the result is beyond my
expectations. I may even have learned something new from doing this.

Top reasons you should upvote this entry

Top reasons you should downvote this entry

Free extras!

the kittenz, aka the only part I was too lazy to fully redraw in tikz: pdfsvg

totally unrelated: some toy shops have DIY stuffed bear kits... well it's more like a
Customize-it-yourself since they will stuff it with a machine. You can choose the color, the
t-shirt, the smell, the sound, you can even print images/text on his t-shirt. My gift was
soooooooo adorable. Go buy one.

LaTeX has some nice title page designs but we need some tools to produce them. The following is a case study to see what is needed to build title pages from some basic building blocks. I improved the first submission by adding coordinate transformations.

The following is the source code. Compiling it may take a while. The document requires the TikZ library external, so the best thing to do is saving the document as name.tex and compiling it with: pdflatex -shell-escape name.tex

The text is a poem called Black March by Stevie Smith; the original text is available here. Complete .tex source for download is available here; compile with pdflatex twice to sync page locations. The .pdf output is available for download here.

\documentclass[14pt]{extarticle}
\usepackage[a4paper,landscape,margin=7pc]{geometry}
\usepackage{ebgaramond}
\usepackage{microtype}
\usepackage{verse}
\usepackage{lettrine}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{tikzmark}
\definecolor{MarchBlue}{HTML}{114466}
\definecolor{MarchLightBlue}{HTML}{339999}
\newcommand{\attrib}[1]{\raggedleft\scshape\lsstyle #1\par}
\renewcommand{\poemtitlefont}{\normalfont\itshape\Huge\centering}
\renewcommand{\LettrineFontHook}{\fontshape{it}\color{MarchBlue!80}}
\setlength{\stanzaskip}{\baselineskip}
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]
\shade[outer color=MarchLightBlue!35,inner color=MarchLightBlue!20]
(current page.south west) rectangle (current page.north east);
\end{tikzpicture}
\poemtitle{\textsw{B}lack March}
\settowidth{\versewidth}{Cambridge blue as cold as snow.)}
\begin{minipage}[b]{16pc}
\begin{verse}[\versewidth]
\lettrine[
lines=4,
loversize=0.5,
findent=0.5em,
nindent=-0.25em,
slope=-0.24em,
lhang=0.5
]{I}{ have a friend} \newline
At the end \newline
Of the world. \newline
His name is a breath
Of fresh air. \\
He is dressed in \\
Grey chiffon. At least \\
I think it is chiffon. \\
It has a \\
Peculiar look, like smoke.
It wraps him round \\
It blows out of place \\
It conceals him \\
I have not seen his face.
\end{verse}
\end{minipage}\hfill%
\begin{minipage}[b]{16pc}
\begin{verse}[\versewidth]
But I have seen his eyes, they are \\
As pretty and bright \\
As raindrops on black twigs \\
In March, and heard him say:
I am a breath \\
Of fresh air for you, a change \\
By and by.
\textsc{\lsstyle Black March} I call him \\
Because of his eyes \\
Being like March raindrops \\
On black twigs.
\end{verse}
\end{minipage}\hfill%
\begin{minipage}[b]{16pc}
\begin{verse}[\versewidth]
Such a pretty time when the sky \\
Behind black twigs can be seen \\
\tikzmark{paren}Stretched out in one \\
Uninterrupted \\
Cambridge blue as cold as snow.
\tikz[
remember picture,
overlay,
xshift=0.488\versewidth,
yshift=0.8ex
] \node at (pic cs:paren)
{\LettrineFontHook\fontsize{110}{112}\normalfont\selectfont [\hspace{0.85\versewidth}]};
But this friend \\
Whatever new names I give him \\
Is an old friend. He says:
Whatever names you give me \\
I am \\
A breath of fresh air, \\
A change for you.
\end{verse}
\end{minipage}%
\vfill
\attrib{stevie smith}
\vfill
\end{document}

This is an example of automated environment using stringstrings and parselines packages to separate plain contents and a complex format, so the first word and the second word are aligned in two parallel diagonals, whereas the remaining text is right-aligned, and the three parts of each line also are formatted distinctly with color gradients across the rows.

The last line is a bit different, and note that there are a hyphen in species name (that is deleted in the output) so that the binomial scientific name is treated as a single word.

Moreover, the code use the tcolorbox package but this tikz part does nothing odd with the text (excepting put all in a nice tcolortbox). So that, a nearly verbatim-like environment, where the settings is only one value of the indentation steps:

Thanks. It looks it should also be possible to do this on top of TikZ. You draw the left two columns as a tree (without lines) and align the rightmost column by computing the positions using the intersections coordinate system and aligning the nodes with anchors to the east.
– user10274Jan 20 '14 at 10:29

@MarcvanDongen Probably, but here not only matter the final result. The main idea was (re)use already made plain text and maintain it readadable for humans (me). I use often this kind of classifications, thus working with a source code as simple as possible was a must.
– FranJan 20 '14 at 11:11

Just a small last-minute entry. I find XeLaTeX exceedingly well-suited for East Asian characters and their attendant phonetic descriptions. I realize this entry is quite elementary, but the clean, crisp presentation of vector glyphs, simply & portably executed, is what drew me to TeX in the first place. And so I celebrate that here.

(In a (pathetic) last ditch attempt to attain contemporary artistic relevance, I added to the preamble:

Here's a few dictionary entries (accuracy unknown) for uncommon words as listed in this AskReddit thread. The text is typeset in Baskerville Ten Pro and Baskerville 120 Pro by Štorm František of the Storm Type Foundry.

% save this document as example.tex
% compile this document with: xelalatex -shell-escape example.tex
\documentclass{article}
% Needed to make sure your page dimensions
% are the same as that of the calendar.
\usepackage[landscape,a4paper,margin=2cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont[Mapping=tex-text,RawFeature={+onum,+pnum,+dlig}]{Baskerville Ten Pro}
\setsansfont[Mapping=tex-text,RawFeature={+onum,+pnum,+dlig}]{Baskerville 120 Pro}
\usepackage{multicol}
\pagestyle{empty}
\parindent=0pt
\def\normalsize{\fontsize{12}{17}\selectfont}
\parskip=12pt
\columnsep=17pt
\multicolsep=14pt
\def\quad{\hskip13pt plus 2pt minus 3pt}
\def\word#1#2#3{\textsc{#1}\hspace{4pt}(\emph{#2}.)\quad#3\par}
\begin{document}
{\sffamily\itshape\addfontfeatures{RawFeature=+salt}\fontsize{28}{36}\selectfont What uncommon word do you think everybody should know?\par}
\vspace{\baselineskip}
\begin{multicols}{4}
\word{agastopia}n{An admiration of a particular part of someone's body.}
\word{apricity}n{The warmth of the sun on a cold winter's day.}
\word{besmirch}v{To cause harm or damage to (the reputation of someone or something).}
\word{bloviate}v{To talk at great length, particularly in a pompous way.}
\word{borborygmus}n{The sound of a stomach rumbling.}
\word{brobdingnagian}a{Enormous, huge, much bigger than is normal for such a thing.}
\word{cockalorum}n{A self-important little man.}
\word{crepuscular}a{Of or relating to twilight.}
\word{cwm}n{Valley.}
\word{ereyesterday}n{The day before yesterday.}
\word{extirpate}v{To destroy or remove completely.}
\word{galeanthropy}n{A mental condition of thinking that one has become a cat.}
\word{gloaming}n{Twilight or dusk.}
\word{gruntled}a{Happy or contented.}
\word{ineffable}a{Incapable of being explained through words.}
\word{latibule}n{A hiding place; somewhere no one could find you.}
\word{lethologica}n{The inability to think of the correct word.}
\word{lugubrious}a{Looking sad or dismal.}
\word{magnanimous}a{Very generous or forgiving, especially toward a rival or someone less powerful than oneself.}
\word{milquetoast}n{A person who is timid or submissive.}
\word{nugatory}a{Of no value, importance or consequence; trifling; useless.}
\word{nyctophilia}n{The love of darkness or night.}
\word{omphaloskepsis}n{Contemplation of one's navel as part of a mystical exercise.}
\word{overmorrow}n{The day after tomorrow.}
\word{petrichor}n{A pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather.}
\word{serendipity}n{A pleasant surprise.}
\word{tmesis}n{The interjection of one word into another.}
\word{verisimilitude}n{The appearance of being true or real.}
\word{zyzzyva}n{A South American weevil.}
\end{multicols}
\vfill
\textsc{source}\quad reddit (\emph{http://redd.it/2a1ubh})\hfill\textsc{typefaces}\quad Baskerville Ten Pro \emph{\&} Baskerville 120 Pro
\end{document}

Is there a reason for not tracking the small caps?
– Henri MenkeJul 9 '14 at 5:56

2

I think the spacing is “very” loose: large interword spaces, very large space after the \word{…}, apparently large \baselineskip and no so different of the spacing between definitions. At first sight, it seems like those are words put on a paper randomly, without a clear order. I would try to reduce the spacing here and there, leaving it a bit more compact.
– ManuelJul 10 '14 at 9:56

Thanks for the effort. Such applications are exactly what I'm looking for. I agree with @Manuel. If it was just the words that were spaced in different entries, it probably wouldn't have mattered much. What I don't like is the different amounts of space before the parenthesized letters.
– user10274Jul 10 '14 at 10:43

2

'cwm' is not an uncommon word at all. It just isn't English. I realise this is content rather than presentation but I suggest sticking to words which are uncommon in the languages they belong to. Otherwise, almost anything could be counted as 'uncommon'.
– cfrJul 22 '14 at 15:07

The TeX family evolved and adapted over the years. The image produced below with pdfLaTeX represents where I would like to see (all)TeX evolve one day.

Some of my new year wishes:

Output routines that enable two page grid typesetting.

Output routines that are easily accessed via LuaTeX or LaTeX3.

The image is typeset with custom code. The 35 lines of code and pdf is at github. You might want to change the picture to suit the calendar theme and to avoid being sued by the Chinese government. The text has one hyphen. The little boxes are the page parameters and dimensions (a bit hard to see on a reduced image).

Here is an adaptation with a Ralf Goings painting from Wikipedia, which is in the public domain. The pdf is also at github.

I wanted to play with the new(ish) package for drawing celtic knots and thought the Mabinogion (y Mabinogi), a collection of stories from middle Welsh manuscripts, would make a good subject. Although the Mabinogion itself is a nineteenth century creation, the original manuscripts are medieval - around the twelfth century.

The image below shows the beginning of each of the 'four branches', one of the sub-groups of stories included in the collection. The text is from the Internet Archive with slight changes to standardise the names etc. The text is not the original middle Welsh but a modernised version. For example, the original manuscripts include letters such as 'k' and 'v' which no longer exist.

As well as demonstrating an application of tikz, this demonstrates the capacity of (pdf)LaTeX to use different fonts and non-standard font styling commands, the ability of TeX to hyphenate languages other than English (babel is used with Welsh hyphenation rules), and the ability to input accented characters directly. [Unfortunately, it also demonstrates the limitations of LaTeX in terms of support for accented characters. While many European languages are supported by utf8, Welsh is not. Hence the use of utf8x to handle 'ŷ'. 'ŵ' encounters similar problems but does not occur in the text included here. I couldn't avoid 'ŷ', though, as it is in the titles of two of the branches as well as the text itself.)

The main fonts are from Arkandis's Venturis families (Venturis Old and Venturis Titling). The font used for the 'branch text' (the heading for each of the four branches) is URW Zapf Chancery.

If preferred, this version demonstrates one way of enabling the long s in (pdf)LaTeX, setting it up as a ligature so that s+ produces the long s, while s produces the regular (for use at the end of words). I decided not to put this as the primary version because I'm not entirely sure I'm using the long s correctly...

Update

Here are two uncial versions. Both use Roman Uncial Modern for the main text, branch numbers and titles. The first, which I prefer, uses this also for the main titles. The second uses Uncial Animals for the main titles. These versions also emphasise the Welsh title by scaling it relative to the English.

Both fonts are the work of George Williams.

The truetype version of Roman Uncial Modern which I have may be distributed modified or unmodified in source or binary form. I'm using the truetype with pdfLaTeX directly. In the case of Uncial Animals, I have the original source for the font but am using a type1 version generated by FontForge from what may be a slightly modified version. According to FontSpace, this font is under the SIL licence. (Basically, I'm saying that I have made reasonable efforts to check and, as far as I can ascertain, it is neither illegal nor immoral to use the fonts here.)

Posting the code for the second version exceeds the character limit. However, here is a patch which turns the code for the first version into the code for the second. (It will apply with a slight 'fuzz' due to three comment lines at the top of my versions.)

It would be awesome to have .pngs rather than .jpg :)
– ManuelSep 7 '14 at 16:32

@Manuel I was confused by this but you are right: they are .jpgs. But I don't know why. They were .pngs when I uploaded them. I just double-checked that I hadn't accidentally saved as .jpg, but I definitely didn't. $ ls mabinogi*.png mabinogi*.jpg gives me ls: cannot access mabinogi*.jpg: No such file or directory and mabinogi-a4.png mabinogi-longs.png mabinogi.png. Why would they get turned into .jpgs and how can I stop them?
– cfrSep 7 '14 at 17:56

@Manuel I've tried uploading slightly smaller .pngs in case that's why they were being turned into .jpgs. Any suggestions would be welcome!
– cfrSep 7 '14 at 18:16

3

I don't want to seem disgruntled but I would like to know why this got down-voted. I understand it may not be the most brilliant answer in the world, but it does answer @MarcvanDongen's question, as far as I can tell, and there are surely worse answers on this site. (As the author of many of them, I should surely know!) In any case, down-voting is one thing, but down-voting with no explanation is another. (Or is it the work of a confused supporter of the 'Better Together' campaign who doesn't realise this is not Gaelic?!)
– cfrSep 15 '14 at 20:54

1

cfr, I'm a completely impartial observer, but maybe the downvoting is due to a case of "TMI". You have 5 pictures, rather than just 1. It makes for a very complete answer but you might consider putting the intermediate steps on a separate page and then linking to that. I think this would show off your finished work better!
– Joe CorneliOct 13 '14 at 13:09

One of the things I like most about LaTeX is the ability to typeset really pleasing bibliographies without much effort. The most customisable solution I encountered so far is the biblatex package and I use it in all my documents where I have to cite any references.

I hope you like my styling of the list of references. The 3em omission rule was chosen because of Bringhurst's advice. To have a uniform appearance of all authors in the list I switched to lastname, firstname initials for all of them.